[currymj]

i actually don’t think nontechnical people understand the result they want of code.

have you ever seen those experiments where they asked people to draw a picture of a bicycle, from memory? people’s pictures made no mechanical sense. often people’s understanding of software is like that — even more so because it’s abstract and many parts are invisible.

learning to clearly describe what software should do is a very artificial skill that at a certain point, shades into part of software engineering.

[throw234234234]

Think this is more true for more niche domains; but probably not for things like web/app development where the user can verify the output themselves. Its one of the reasons I'm more bearish on frontend/apps - because that's where the value is to most people and they understand it. That's the key and why it will disrupt code more than math - a non-math person doesn't actually know/want the input or output of advanced math (don't know what they don't know problem) so it remains more of a tool in that domain.

Those people with cross domain knowledge in an industry will continue to have value for some time able to contribute to domain discussions and execute better with the tech. As a result I've always thought the "engineering" part of software was more valuable than the CS/Leetcode part of the industry. As a lecturer many decades ago told me in a SE course - "you will know more about their business, in greater detail by the time you are finished, then they even do".